Legislators of the Truth

“Sister, I do believe you” is a slogan of the feminist movement that gained popularity in Spain in response to the “La Manada” case.

Legislators of Truth

“Sister, I do believe you” is a slogan from the feminist movement that gained popularity in Spain in response to the “La Manada” case, in which five men gang-raped an 18-year-old woman. Carolina Losada, an Argentine senator and author of the bill that increases penalties for false accusations, appeared to allude to this phrase during the plenary session on security and justice on June 4, 2025, when she said: “We have to put an end to the paradigm that ‘if you’re a woman, I believe you’ just because you’re a woman. I believe you if you’re a woman and you’re telling the truth.” The bill, file number S-0228/2025, authored by Carolina Losada and co-sponsored by five other senators, establishes amendments to the offenses of false reporting and perjury in the National Penal Code. On the one hand, it provides for increased penalties; on the other, it imposes harsher penalties for offenses involving allegations of gender-based violence, crimes against minors, or sexual assault. The explanatory memorandum contextualizes the alleged need to incorporate these amendments into the criminal justice system by addressing the dissemination of allegations in the media and on social media, which in many cases leads to “public shaming.” They also note that filing a false complaint of sexual abuse places a very heavy burden on the accused, who, in addition to having to prove that they did not commit the act of which they are accused, faces risks such as “in many cases losing contact with their children, jeopardizing their employment and facing a whole series of serious social stigmas.” While false accusations pose various problems, the bill takes a flawed legislative and legal approach, exaggerates the magnitude of the problem, and—if passed—could negatively impact the exercise of freedom of expression and access to justice for victims of gender-based violence, since their right to express themselves would be subject to a “truth test” that generally does not apply to the debate of matters of public interest.

Differences Between Defamation and False Accusations: Some (Im)precisions by the Authors

Regarding defamation and false accusations, the structure of the Penal Code itself gives rise to several observations. While the criminal offense of slander is classified under the section “crimes against honor,” false accusation is a crime classified under the section “crimes against the public administration.” This means they protect different legal interests. Similarly, they are fundamentally different types of conduct. For slander to be established, the subjects of the offense must be specific or identifiable individuals; the conduct attributed to them must be criminalized in the Penal Code or other criminal laws; and the attribution must be specific; the accusation of the crime through slander must give rise to public prosecution; the statements must be false; the person accused of committing the crime must not have committed it; and the person making the statements must be aware of that falsity. On the other hand, in the case of a false accusation the crime is committed when the accusation is made and affects the administration of justice by triggering judicial proceedings while knowing that the alleged act is nonexistent.. These differences are essential to clarify certain confusions that have been raised by senators in the drafting of the explanatory memorandum and during the debate. In the explanatory memorandum, they state that the issue outlined leads them to “request the inclusion of a paragraph in Article 117 bis of the Penal Code (CPN) whereby the dissemination of false information and defamation in the context of gender-based violence, sexual abuse or harassment, or violence against children and adolescents would result in an aggravated penalty.” Article 117 bis, to which they refer, sets out the penalties for the crimes of defamation and slander; however, the bill contains no proposal regarding this matter and focuses instead on amendments concerning the criminal offense of false reporting. This lack of precision in the text and in the legislative technique employed reveals that “slander” and “false reporting” are two distinct criminal offenses. The bill addresses only the latter, so the aim of regulating the dissemination of false information on social media and in the media has little to do with what the bill actually seeks to achieve.

Gender-Based Violence and Freedom of Expression

The bill considers that false accusations are aggravated when disseminated on social media and links this problem to “public shaming.” In doing so, it introduces an inescapable dimension of freedom of expression and opts for measures that restrict this right—measures that must be justified by general principles. In this regard, the initiative is based on a conceptual error in failing to recognize that reports of gender-based violence constitute matters of significant public interest and are therefore—consequently—speech that is particularly protected in a democratic political community. “Escrache,” on the other hand, is a specific form of action that emerged in Argentina within the context of the human rights movement during the era when the “Due Obedience” and “Full Stop” laws were in effect. Understood as an informal public denunciation, it first appeared with the organization H.I.J.O.S. (Sons and Daughters for Identity and Justice Against Oblivion and Silence), which around 1996 carried out actions to publicly identify members of the armed forces who had participated in the dictatorship and benefited from the impunity laws and pardons. Some time later, the feminist movement adoptedthe “escrache” as a practice that, just as it began, responds to the shortcomings of the judicial systems in the face of certain phenomena. Not every false accusation constitutes an “escracho” in this sense, nor should an informal act of public denunciation necessarily be equated with a false accusation. In this regard, there is an essential dimension of freedom of expression in the public denunciation of cases of gender-based violence. In the Joint Statement on Freedom of Expression and Gender Justice, the United Nations (UN) Special Rapporteur on the Promotion and Protection of the Right to Freedom of Opinion and Expression, the Representative of the Organization for Security and Cooperation in Europe (OSCE) on Freedom of the Media, the Special Rapporteur on Freedom of Expression of the Organization of American States (OAS) and the Special Rapporteur of the African Commission on Human and Peoples’ Rights (ACHPR) on Freedom of Expression and Access to Information affirmed that “women who publicly denounce the alleged perpetrators of sexual or gender-based violence should not be charged with criminal defamation, nor prosecuted for false reporting of crimes, nor be subject to frivolous or vexatious defamation lawsuits.” On the contrary, statements made by women consisting of allegations of sexual and gender-based violence are, according to the IACHR Special Rapporteur on Freedom of Expression, expressions that are specially protected under freedom of expression. Consequently, [“States must ensure that such speech enjoys special protection, since restricting it may hinder the eradication of violence against women.”] States must decriminalize all acts of defamation and libel, and enact comprehensive legislation to deter vexatious or frivolous defamation cases and strategic lawsuits against public participation (SLAPPs) that seek to intimidate and silence women and deter them from public participation”](https://www.oas.org/es/cidh/expresion/showarticle.asp?artID=1233&lID=2). Few countries in the region have developed specific lines of case law addressing the tensions inherent in this practice. Among them is Colombia, whose Constitutional Court has examined “escrache” by balancing freedom of expression on the one hand with potential rights that could be infringed, such as honor, reputation, and the presumption of innocence. Indeed, the case law of the Colombian Constitutional Court on “escrache” has been grounded in the concept of institutional violence, which has already been recognized and developed by the Inter-American Court of Human Rights, which refers to situations in which the State becomes a secondary aggressor against women who turn to institutions to report acts of violence. That is why, in its first ruling along these lines, the Court referred to public shaming as a “safety valve”. In the Court’s view, in these cases, freedom of expression promotes “peaceful protests against state or social decisions that discriminate against women (…) It is an act of self-defense against any attack that, from their perspective, they consider harmful to their integrity or dignity.” Furthermore, this right takes on greater significance in societies where there are high rates of gender-based violence and, specifically, violence against women. Its purpose is to express dissent against sexist state, social, and personal practices, which can be expressed in all forms, including on social media.” Public complaints, whether individual or collective, regarding violence against women are a valid and protected exercise of freedom of expression, with enhanced constitutional protection, which in turn play an important role by informing and raising public awareness about an issue of general interest. Furthermore, they help strengthen support networks among victims, which contributes to both the prevention and investigation of acts of discrimination and violence. They also help identify patterns of violence, such as repeat offenders or areas that pose a particular danger to women.

From Public Shaming to False Accusations: Intimidation of Complainants

The bill contains errors in legislative drafting that are clearly evident in the explanatory memorandum and range from the apparent confusion between the criminal offense of false reporting and the conduct of slander (mentioned above) to the assertion that in criminal proceedings, the burden of proof lies with the defendant. But the problem with the proposal is not limited to the above. The narrative behind the proposed amendment draws on stereotypes that are not new and are not supported by verifiable arguments. According to UN Women (2024), “false reports account for less than 1% globally. In Spain, only 0.0084% of cases of gender-based violence. In Argentina, there are no official statistics, but available studies show that less than 3% of all criminal complaints are false, mostly involving economic crimes.” In fact, according to members of ELA who searched for case law on the Supreme Court of Justice’s website, “cases involving false reports are usually linked primarily to economic crimes, forgery, and customs offenses —scams, insurance fraud, smuggling—; the proportion of women charged is very low; and none involved complaints of gender-based violence”. The notion that women tend to file complaints with the intent to cause harm or seek revenge is unfounded and creates obstacles that prevent victims of gender-based violence from being recognized, accessing justice, and obtaining redress in a context where, according to the prevalence survey on violence, “45% of Argentine women have experienced violence at some point in their lives at the hands of a current or former partner, but only one in four sought help or actually filed a report”. There is no clear, precise, or proportionate justification for incorporating gender-based violence as a distinct category for aggravating penalties. On the contrary, modifying penalties by applying special criteria to these cases introduces gender-based discriminatory standards and intimidates victims of gender-based violence who turn to the judicial system, creating situations of deterrence and revictimization. The same applies to crimes against sexual integrity and crimes against children. Crimes that constitute gender-based violence, including sexual violence, are complex in terms of evidence, a problem that is exacerbated when they are viewed as events that occur within and fall under the private sphere. This raises concerns regarding the criminal offense of false reporting, which could have serious repercussions for women who turn to the judicial system to file complaints—women who already face barriers in the investigation and prosecution of the conduct they report, but who could now be punished for reporting conduct that is not easy to prove given the burdens of the system. This evidentiary difficulty means that it is harder to rebut the presumption of innocence. For this reason, the acquittal of the accused in criminal proceedings does not necessarily imply that the complaint is “false” or that it constitutes slander. Creating obstacles to access to justice disregards the Argentine State’s duty to act with due diligence to prevent, investigate, and punish violence against women, as recognized in the Belém do Pará Convention, adopted throughLaw No. 24,632, because it would disproportionately impact women who have historically been subjected to violence and discrimination on the basis of gender.